Why Play Table Tennis?

1. Health and Fitness
Table tennis is good for your health – it’s great for getting up a sweat and getting the heart rate up. Played at the higher levels, it’s one of the fastest sports around. But you don’t have to be a pro to get a good workout. Just a couple of hours a week playing table tennis can do wonders for your fitness.
It improves reflexes and due to the fast-paced, short-distance nature of the sport, both gross and fine muscle movements are improved. The game is distinguished by bursts of exertion and recovery, leading to fast-twitch muscle development.
Table tennis helps you build strength, speed, and agility without risking serious injury.
It improves balance. Staying balanced and being able to quickly change direction is key to being a good table tennis player. The more you play, the more you can improve your sense of balance.
It burns calories: A 68kg person can burn 272 calories by playing table tennis for an hour. Considering the fact that the sport is entertaining and addictive, it can be a fun and easy way to burn calories.
2. Gentle on Your Body
It’s easy on the body. You can play table tennis according to your own capabilities and limitations and still be competitive. Being a non-contact sport, you don’t have to worry about the injuries that you can get in contact sports.
3. Everyone Can Play
Table tennis is a sport for all ages. There’s no age or gender barriers – it’s common at clubs for 60 year old veterans to be playing 15 year old juniors, or men playing against women, and with everyone having a great time and a close match. Families can all play each other without having to worry about the bigger or stronger members dominating the game. In fact, many athletes with disabilities can compete on equal terms with able-bodied athletes at table tennis, since there is much more to the game than sheer power or strength.
4. A Sport for Life
Table tennis is a lifelong sport, that can be played competitively right up to your eighties and beyond. It’s never too late to start, and you won’t have to hang up your bat later on because you are getting too old for the sport. As you get older, better use of tactics, and bat technology such as long pimples or antispin, can compensate for slowing reflexes or slowing speed around the table.
5. Keeps You Mentally Sharp
Table Tennis is good for the brain. There is an awful lot of thinking, planning, and strategising about the speed, spin and placement of the ball, all of which helps keep the brain active. An intense game of table tennis stimulates mental alertness and concentration and develops mental sharpness. Table tennis also utilizes many different areas of the brain simultaneously as you are tracking the ball, planning shots and strategies, and figuring out spins.
It also improves hand-eye coordination.
6. You Can Play Anytime
Table tennis is an indoor, non-seasonal sport. You can play it all year round, day or night.
7. You Can Play Anywhere
It’s space efficient. You don’t need a huge amount of space to have fun playing table tennis at home, and a foldaway table can be put away when you aren’t using it. By the time you really need to stretch out and move around the court, you should be ready to go play at your local club, which should have plenty of space to run around in. Clubs usually have more than one table, so you will be able to play against different people.
8. Make New Friends
Table tennis is a great social sport. You’ll get to meet plenty of people and make new friends at your local clubs. Play a competition once in a while and you’ll be able to compete and make friends with a whole bunch of fellow table tennis enthusiasts.
9. You Don’t Have to Spend a Fortune
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to play table tennis. A basic bat can be bought for around £30, and will give good service while learning the game. A good racket for intermediate and advanced play would usually be around £50-£100. Even the most expensive professional rackets wouldn’t be much more than a couple of hundred pounds. The cost of joining a club and the weekly club fees are usually quite low compared to sports such as golf or tennis.
10. It's Fun to Play
Table tennis is great fun to play and can be quite addictive. It is a wonderful sport to take up for life, with no age restrictions. It’s easy to play, but difficult to master. You will always have another challenge to look forward to, and another mountain to climb.